Trump

trump (1):- a trumpet. *v.t  To impose (a thing) upon by fraud.  Last Trump:  The end of the world.  to trump up:  to fabricate, to concoct.

trump (2): Any card of a suit ranking for the time being above the others. v.t to take with a trump. v.i to play a trump-card. *to put to one’s trumps: To reduce to one’s last expedient.  trump-card: the card turned up to decide which suit is to be trumps; any card of this suit; (fig.) an infallible expedient.

trumpery n.  Worthless finery; rubbish.  a. Showy but worthless, delusive, rubbishy.

Source “The Concise Oxford Dictionary”.  

Thank you for following me through this exercise in definitions from that wonderfully antiquated tome, but I doubt your thoughts were unaffected by a man of that name.  All the above was probably printed before his birth as the copy I am holding is in worse condition than he is.  The covers are missing, the fabric spine is exposed and shredding, every page is dog-eared from extensive use and many pages hard to read from creeping mold taking its last revenge.  Then again, perhaps it isn’t in worse condition than Trump.  At least it is modest.  On the first remaining page (many before now lost), is:-

“In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise has been performed.”

Dr Samuel Johnson (born 1709) in the preface to his “Dictionary of the English Language”. 

I have been diverted from my purpose which was to rail against Trump’s outrageous statement about “shithouse countries”.  For one of the self-professed most intelligent persons on the planet, his grasp of reality is remarkably tenuous.  People love the country, culture and society they were brought up in.  There are no ‘shithouse countries’.  Sometimes people find the conditions in those countries to be untenable because of persecution, poverty, imminent death or catastrophe.  The Rohingya do not flee to Bangladesh because they see it as the land of milk and honey.  They truly love the land they were fleeing and would not expose their children to harm, miserable refugee camps,  exploitation and hardship unless they were desperate.  In Australia’s own struggles to understand and conceptualise refugees, let us not think of them as economic opportunists.  First of all they were wrenched from their societies and then had to consider their opportunities.  As someone who came from the UK and then had the leisure to survey my opportunities, I feel as if I had a red carpet laid, and someone from say Afghanistan had the fire pit laid.  I am the economic opportunist not driven by great need.  My attraction to Australia was not its wealth opportunities, but the vast size and wilderness, its beauty and contrasts.  I suspect refugees attraction is Australia’s stability, rule of law and a safe place to bring up kids who might have a brilliant future, good food on the table every night, and they, like me, would see money as secondary, just a means to an end.  That many refugees work so hard, if given the chance, is not so much that they want money or want to take over the world, but they are so motivated by traumatic experiences, that they would do anything to protect their children from the same.

Digressed again.  Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury” I haven’t read, but the fallout could be very entertaining.  It seems the theme is that the irrational and fickle Trump rushes around everywhere like a bull in a china shop and is used to having an entourage of acolytes follow him around to clean up the broken Ming vases and the bullshit.  I think the entourage is getting very tired, and many have dropped out like Bannon who actually got him the job in the first place.  I think perhaps Trump may be quite right when he claims a high IQ.  It is more likely his problems are in emotional development where he seems to be stuck at the level of a 4 year old.  I have more respect for Henry, my 3 1/2 year grandson to sort things out with his little brother, than I would entrust to Trump.  Henry can understand ‘Hey, we have all got to have fun for this to work’.  Trump hasn’t got this far yet.  It’s all about him.  I doubt he will have an epiphany at this late stage in his life.  

I hope we survive this experiment in chaotic leadership.  It may come to the only coup in history where his underlings gently surrounded him and slip on a suit with all the fastenings at the back and lead him off to a very nice quiet place in the country.